Add a second to the tally of lonely women living in the middle of nowhere who suggest staying a while and complaining that the guards never give any alone time.

Skyrim has made quests a bit more interesting, even more so than they were in Oblivion, relative to choiceless quests so often found in extremely popular MMORPGs. I first heard this in relation to the Dark Brotherhood line, which didn't surprise me, since the quests in Oblivion were some of the best in the game, competing only with the Thief's Guild for general awesomeness. Let me put it this way, when dealing with chaotic, but not necessarily evil demons, it is very hard to actually anger them, so feel free to follow your own path.

Crafting is now done with equipment at locations, such as forges, cooking pots, and alchemy tables. Also, there is not crafting that does not involve turning corn and rice into stamina potions. I don't know yet if I will care much about the expanded crafting system, but I suspect I'll learn more when I make my second character. At some point I hope to make a rogue sort of evil guy, who follows the right path overall (saves the world) but in the wrong way (kills half of it for fun).

I forgot to mention the assistant at the inn in Falkreath. She's very friendly. Friendly. You know what I mean. The first lonely woman I ran into seemed fine. Family got killed, she killed the killer, so now she lives in the woods, surviving despite people trying to kill her. Strong. It seems perfectly reasonable that she'd be a bit lonely, given her years of isolation excluding bandits. If this was a party-based game like Dragon Age, that seems like a set-up to recruit a party member. Then I ran into the inn assistant who insisted on pointing out what a big strong man I am. Maybe that's her job. She seemed to be wearing a strange mix of warm clothes and exposed legs and cleavage that made me suspect that it is her job to flirt with customers while not freezing to death. Then there was the woman at the inn, who wanted me to stay a while, despite not renting any rooms.

I'm not sure what to make of the politics in Falkreath. On one hand, the new Jarl seems like the corrupt type to push out his uncle to be the big fish. On the other hand, the uncle also seems a bit paranoid, so maybe it was a legitimate move to remove him. There does seem to be a lot of imperial activity, understandable given the rebellion, and with a rebellion, it seems like a good idea to install puppets.

Speaking of rebellions, I don't think there are quite enough to keep track of. We've got the Talos agitators, the Forsworn who are whining about being conquered thousands of years ago, the Stormcloaks who want independence, but are also enemies of the Forsworn, the corrupt Silver-Bloods who make the Koch brothers look like upstanding citizens, and of course, rumors of a dragonborn, which mostly means the guards ask me to stop shouting so much. Yea, they want me to stop shouting. Once right after I killed the dragon that would have turned their little town to ashes.

I think I've been playing WoW too long, because I figured, if guy tells you to join in the prison escape, you join in the prison escape. I didn't recognize that I could stab him during the process. So now there's some crazed racist guy running around worshipping demons. At least most of his friends seem to have died and I didn't get blamed for the three guards I killed or the dozen or so people I was framed for killing, or in a dozen or so cases, actually killed. What I'm trying to say is that all the killing was justified and the only unjustified one was a frame. I had nothing to do with it! Honest!

Speaking of hijinks ensuing, I got into a drinking contest. I figured it would be like the punching contests, but with alcohol. Instead I woke up finding that I had trashed a temple and fondled their statues. And at some point I kidnapped a goat and sold it to a giant. Sanguine's Rose was a much more interesting weapon in Oblivion.

So yadda yadda killing thousands of more people, next thing I know I'm a thane or two and I've got this woman following me around carrying stuff when I ask. I figured I should visit the mage college and along the way got attacked by a dragon. Somehow this particular fight didn't go very well. I found myself caught in a full blast staying alive with heals, but without the mana to retaliate safely. Then it died. I had some running to do, on account of not wanting to get hit by the giant either.

Between feeling lazy over the holidays and playing Skyrim for the majority of the hours in the day, I'm probably going to be posting infrequently still. Maybe Wednesday I'll try to find all the things Skyrim does better than Oblivion and see if I can find anything it does worse. Before I forget: merchants having limited gold available makes a lot more sense than the Oblivion model of limited gold per transaction, but it sure is annoying at some times, especially early on when I found myself stuck in some little nothing town. That's what I get for wandering off the first chance I got. Maybe that's why the start of the game has me literally tied up; it was the only way to ensure I'd do at least something when I was supposed to.

I've been too busy pouring feats into sneak and... sneak (I like sneaking). With those feats and some Darkbrotherhood gloves my dagger sneak attack is up to 30x. That isn't counting the one-handed talents.